A trip through a few days worth of my Facebook posts shows that, with little effort, I can expose Proggies to ideas and facts they usually miss or ignore.

Of late, between paying work, family demands, and a touch of the blecchies (not the flu, thank goodness, but I wasn’t feeling great), I’ve been posting on my real-me Facebook more than I’ve been blogging. Blogging requires paragraphs; Facebook requires sentences, a word here or there, or no comment at all to introduce an article.

My two goals on Facebook are to entertain people, so they keep coming back to my feed, and to place before them things that they won’t normally see as they shuffle back and forth between The New York Times, The Washington Post, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and the usual mono-ideologues who make up their intellectual world. I try to do the latter in an entirely non-judgmental way, so that people will stop and think, rather than block and argue.

To give you a sense of my M.O., here’s a sampling of things from my real-me Facebook feed over the last few days, many of which you’ll probably recognize from Instapundit and other familiar sites:

I knew that Cape Town’s imminent water shortage was its own fault because it failed to plan for drought, despite living where they regularly occur and despite a population much larger than the last time a drought rolled around. That was the same problem California had with its recent drought (and may continue to have, because last year’s big rains, rather than heralding the end of drought seem to have been just a pause). What I didn’t know was that it was South Africa’s poisonous antipathy to Israel that prevented it from saving itself. Now, when I see Cape Towners lined up with little cans at communal fountains, I don’t feel sorry for them, just as I really didn’t feel sorry for Californians (myself included) stupid enough to live in a state that failed to prepare for inevitable dry periods.

Everybody loves MacDonald’s — even Lefties. That’s why, back in 1990, when the first MacDonald’s opened in the former Soviet Union, 30,000 Russians lined up for the chance to eat there:

Emotional support pets on planes are too often a scam. I adore my dog, who makes me happy, and I’d definitely be a less panicked airplane passenger if I held him in my arms, but he’s still not medically necessary, and most other so-called emotional support pets aren’t either. The way people have abused the service pet exception to animals on planes is especially bad because it’s making things so difficult for those people who genuinely need an animal at their side to help them navigate their world or to guard them against dangerous seizures and other serious ailments. And so I said on Facebook.

Sharyl Attkisson, one of the last honest reporters, explained that the Nunes memo indicates that the FBI violated Woods Procedures. So that my friends don’t have to exhaust themselves clicking over to the article, I explain that this means that the FBI isn’t attesting to its own probity, or even the probity of the person who assembled a dossier. It needs to make a colorable showing that the person who first voiced the information — the anonymous source — is credible. I added that I was interested in learning more about those sources. Since then, of course, we’ve had intimations that the sources are Sidney Blumenthal and friends, people so devious and untrustworthy that only the Clintons could bear their presence. I haven’t mentioned those last facts to my Proggie friends. [Read more…]

Rather than alleviating poverty, are America’s welfare programs set up to perpetuate poverty? Here’s an essay compellingly arguing that the answer is “yes.”

I was lucky enough, while on Facebook, to read a private post that Alex Lekas wrote about the paradoxical fact that the federal War on Poverty has a vested interest in keeping people impoverished. Alex was kind enough to give me permission to re-print his post here. The remainder of this post is from Alex, not from me:

***

Pull up a chair, this will take a few minutes. On the upside, there are no personal attacks, no profanity, no partisanship; just us talking like adults.

A friend of mine posted a Newsweek article about a UN delegation’s visit to Alabama to look at poverty. I’m sure the subject, location, and timing of the article’s release have nothing to do with the election, but that doesn’t really matter.

The article says roughly 41-million Americans live in poverty. According to the House Budget Committee, there are at least 92 federal programs with a combined budget of almost $800-billion. Per capita, that’s about $20,000 per recipient, except per capita benefits isn’t how this works. The $800-billion is also salaries and over head, and every single person on that payroll is invested — and I mean invested — in seeing that those dollars keep flowing and will fight for them. Dare to question the dollars or how they’re spent and you’ll be accused of starving kids and killing old folks. Which raises the question: Is the goal to alleviate poverty or perpetuate it?

The $800-billion is also this fiscal year’s spending. Trillions have been spent since the war on poverty was declared 50 years ago and there is no ceasefire in sight. There’s not even an honest appraisal of the programs to see which are or are not effective. Why would there be? Every one of the at-least 92 federal programs is someone’s livelihood. If you peel the onion for a cost-benefit analysis or to measure ROI, there might be uncomfortable questions raised. These are not just programs ostensibly designed to help people in need; they are an industry with various special interest groups dedicated to maintaining, and without a hint of cynicism, growing the industry. [Read more…]

Looking at this grab-bag post, I can see the common thread: valuing tight-knit communities, nuclear families, and each individual’s worth.

I know why Utah’s welfare is working. Megan McArdle wrote a much-talked-about article in which she looked at Utah, which has extremely good and affordable social services. The key to Utah’s successful welfare system, although I’m not sure she realizes it, lies in this paragraph:

The volunteering starts in the church wards, where bishops keep a close eye on what’s going on in the congregation, and tap members as needed to help each other. If you’re out of work, they may reach out to small business people to find out who’s hiring. If your marriage is in trouble, they’ll find a couple who went through a hard time themselves to offer advice.

With a system like that, you’re not going to have the type of fraud that occurred in Minnesota. There, none of the bureaucrats who cut $118,000 in checks knew that the woman claiming an absent husband had, in fact, a gainfully employed husband living with her and their children. In Utah, where charity begins at the ward level, everyone would have known the woman’s marital situation and the fraud could not have happened.

All of this made me think of a fascinating talk I heard a few years ago. I learned that, before government welfare, America was not a cold, cruel place in which widows and orphans routinely died. Instead, America had a vast network of fraternal organizations that functioned as welfare organizations. As with the Mormon wards, these “welfare” agencies worked extremely well because they took place at the community level. That meant that those responsible for administering an organization’s funds knew if Joe Shmo was a layabout or a hard worker on hard times.

Utah’s hands-on approach has managed to run counter to the prevailing American system that separates the needy from the check-writers. Until we return to community-based charitable organizations, fraud and waste will be the rule of the day.

I don’t see us making that U-turn. Having passed the baton to the government, Americans are not suddenly going to enlist en masse in the Kiwanis or the Shriners (more’s the pity).

Mike Pence’s “wife” policy shows that he’s a decent and smart man. Progressives are having a field day with the fact that, if Mike Pence is have a dinner tête-à-tête with a woman, that woman will always be his wife. Here’s a tweet perfectly summarizing the hysteria:

Yet another informative, persuasive Prager U video, this time with Arthur Brooks, of AEI, explaining how best to leave poverty behind.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: When it comes to simple, but never simplistic, lessons about core issues such as the economy, morality, national security, gender roles, immigration, poverty, etc., there is nothing out there better than Prager U. Every time I watch one, I’m convinced that, instead of spending obscene sums of money on Little Bookworm’s so-called “education” at an Obscenely Expensive Liberal Arts College, I should just sit her in front of the computer and make her watch every single Prager U video. She’d be better educated and, with the money I save on college, I could give Prager U a hefty, meaningful donation to go on making more of these spectacular videos.

Today’s video is about the difference between maintaining people in poverty (the Progressive way) and enabling them to lift themselves out of poverty (the conservative way). During the video, Arthur Brooks, the narrator makes the point that welfare can become a habit, sapping people’s will to work.

I’ve made that same point here endlessly. One of the main problems with the middle- and upper-middle-class Progressive is that he is incapable of understanding that not everyone aspires to his trendy, affluent lifestyle. Thanks to having a close friend who lives (happily) in a marginal existence, I get to hear about my friend’s world: homeless people, people who survive on various welfare programs, and the handful who want out.

The homeless are (1) drug addicts, (2) alcoholics, and (3) crazy, although it’s hard to tell if Item (3) is organic or a byproduct of (1) and (2). The “perpetually on welfare” people all drink and use drugs in quantities far in excess of the more successful people in my world. More significantly, the “perpetually on welfare” people are fine living in a marginal neighborhood, bartering with each other for the goods and services they need (including drugs), and shopping at Wal-Mart. As long as they don’t have to work, they do not aspire to anything more in their lives.

My iPad ran out of juice when the forum on rural America started, so I’m going off my memory here. Apologies in advance if this seems somewhat incomplete.

Jay Nordlinger was the moderator again, with Kevin Williamson, Reihan Salam, Victor Davis Hanson, and David French on the panel. I’ll address the issues they raised as they float up from the murk and mire in my brain.

Kevin Williamson raised the point that I found most interesting — in large part because I’ve made the same argument repeatedly here — which is that part of America’s rural problem is lack of geographic mobility; or, more accurately, the fact that many unemployed people remain that way because they refuse to leave their homes for better economic opportunities.

Before I get to what Williamson said, I’m going to back up to the argument I’ve made here since 2008. My friend of mine, through a series of spectacularly unwise investments in real estate, by 2009 ended up almost in an area that had formerly been a real estate boom town.

This friend could have relocated to a region where there was work to be had. After all, up until the 1960s, that was the American way, starting with those people who left their home countries for America in the first place.

Rather than following American tradition, though, my friend opted to stay put because she could get by on public and private charity. That is, because she was ready to embrace a rather marginal existence, she opted to drop out of the marketplace.

I was therefore delighted to have Williamson remind me of an article he wrote some years ago in which he said that there are towns in America that should just be abandoned. The citizens in these towns may have been unemployed for generations (something more true for the men than the women), are often substance abusers, and have no work ethic or skills.

A Progressive friend is relentlessly pushing “Trump is awful” stories on me. I, a conservative, invariably counter by pointing out that Hillary’s list of sins and failures is infinitely worse.

I realized yesterday that my arguments are irrelevant. My friend will never vote for someone who is not 100% pro-abortion, pro-socialized medicine, or pro-open borders. Given a choice between a rotting dead body that is pro-Abortion and a genuine angel from Heaven that is pro-Choice, he’d vote for the rotting body every time.

Even as we endlessly talk down the other side’s candidates (because few people are really comfortable talking their own candidate up in this bizarre election year), what really matters is the ideological divide underlying this election. The following list might help you decide on which side of that divide you live. Once you decide, do remember that you will never get people to accept your candidate, no matter how flawed their own candidate, until you get them to accept your ideology.

Hillary’s cough has sounded awfully familiar to me — and today I finally figured out what Hillary’s endless coughing jags bring to mind. To back up a minute, though. . . .

As anyone following the news knows, Hillary’s been coughing a lot . . . an awful lot. Just today, while campaigning in Cleveland, Hillary practically coughed a lung out. Moreover, she was rude enough to cough into her hand, which has been de trop ever since the swine floor, rather than her elbow, the more socially acceptable way to cough:

Watching Hillary hack away, I finally figured out where I’ve heard that cough before. Think back, way back, to the Ernie Kovacs Show. I’m too young to have watched it in its first iteration, but I did see it when it was replayed on PBS back in the 1970s. One of the images that stayed with me was Kovacs’ character “Eugene,” who brings sound effects to everything he does. Near the end of a sketch, he checks out the books on a shelf, with one of those books being Camille (the English translation of Alexander Dumas fils’ La Dame aux Camélias). I’ve queued the following clip to the correct moment, but if it doesn’t start correctly, go to 9:51.

Yup. Hillary sounds exactly like the consumptive prostitute coughing in Ernie Kovacs’ comedic moment. I won’t draw any analogies, although I can’t help but add that the prostitute in Camille was surprisingly virtuous, ending any actual comparison with Hillary. What I will say is that I’m glad to have chased down the fugitive memory that was haunting me every time I heard Hillary hack.

Fifty years of data show that Democrat policies harm American blacks. All the promises of the post-Civil Rights era have failed. Worse, America’s Democrat leadership, especially its black Democrat leadership, no longer makes even a pretense of serving the needs of the American Black community.

Democrat elites, both white and black, are just like the European Union’s elites: serving themselves — their values and their bank accounts — without no regard for the people they ostensibly represent. Both the Democrats and the EU leadership ride roughshod over ordinary people’s values and ignore their needs. It’s high time, therefore, for American Blacks to have their own Brexit moment — call it a “Blexit” if you will — and turn their backs on the Democrat Party that has served them so badly.

In 1964, you had to give the Democrats credit for adaptability: After spending the late 1950s and early 1960s fighting desperately against the Civil Rights Movement, once it was a done deal they surveyed the landscape and realized that they could use the movement to their advantage. By attaching African Americans firmly to the government teat, Democrats figured that they could rely on a pacified black voting bloc to achieve perpetual political power. Indeed, LBJ is alleged to have made the politically incorrect boast that the Civil Rights act ensured that “I’ll have those n*****s voting Democrat for two-hundred years.”

Sadly, the Great Society legislation that LBJ and his Democrats instituted, while it has ensured those reliable black votes, has continued an American pattern: Every bad thing that has happened to blacks in America has been the result of government forces. Slavery lasted because the Southern legal system brutally supported it. Likewise, the Jim Crow era lasted as long and as virulently as it did because, again, the Southern legal system brutally supported it.

It’s almost certain that, without rigorously enforced laws separating facilities, criminalizing “miscegenation,” and foreclosing education and work opportunities, the free market would have improved black lives in the South. As Milton Friedman explained, in Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition, the free flow of wealth, without legislation and regulation impeding non-violent, non-fraudulent conduct, is the single best and fastest way to end just about any type of discrimination:

A month ago, my Facebook feed (which reflects the fact that many of my friends are Progressives) was suddenly overrun by a series of posters, all pointing out that minimum wage work is insufficient to support the cost of a two bedroom apartment. It’s unlikely that the new minimum wage laws that went into effect on January 1, 2016, in 14 states will change these charts:

Also, in a charming irony, that problem is worse in most blue states compared to most red ones, as you’ll see if you compare the two charts below:

There are three major bad ideas packed into the notion that minimum wage should be the Rolls Royce of salaries.

Increasing the minimum wage is an inefficient way to reduce poverty, according to a Fed research paper that comes amid a national clamor to hike pay for workers at the low end of the salary scale.

David Neumark, visiting scholar at the San Francisco Fed, contends in the paper that raising the minimum wage has only limited benefits in the war against poverty, due in part because relatively few of those falling below the poverty line actually receive the wage.

Many of the benefits from raising the wage, a move already undertaken by multiple governments around the country as well as some big-name companies, tend to go to higher-income families, said Neumark, who also pointed to research that shows raising wages kills jobs through higher costs to employers.

On its face, then, the charts’ premise, which is that higher minimum wages will see everyone in better homes, is wrong.

Yes, it’s that time again — when I go through my Progressive friends’ Facebook posts, culling the most stupid or irritating posters. Before I do that, though, I want to quote John Hinderaker, who was overwhelmed by the mean-spirited, illogical banality of a Leftist’s tweet.

Liberals pursue many policies that cause people to die. They release felons from prison, or never incarcerate them in the first place; they make war on the police, causing murder rates to spike; they impede the ability of pharmaceutical companies to bring life-saving drugs to market; they drive up the cost of energy, exposing the poor to dangerous temperature extremes; they promote gun-free zones that turn innocent people into sitting ducks; they pursue weak foreign policies that cause many thousands to be killed by tyrants and terrorists.

These are just a few obvious examples. Yet conservatives don’t call liberals murderers. We extend them the presumption of good faith. We debate policy, we don’t assert that liberals are pro-death. But liberals are not similarly fair-minded. The latest case in point is Josh Marshall, proprietor of TPM, who tweeted:

And with that in mind, let me do the full front attack on liberal thinking that conservatives should do routinely. Because the Left’s simplistic thinking ignores facts and analysis, a brief poster results in a lot of writing. I’m therefore breaking this post down into several posts, which I’ll publish over the course of the afternoon. Part 2, about gun grabbing, is already up here, while Part 3 (about abortion) is here. As always, I’ll lead with the poster and follow with my comments:

Kudos to JK Brown for finding this Milton Friedman lecture in which he discusses the way in which the welfare state affects immigration. Europe might want to watch this video. The immigration discussion starts at about nine and a half minutes into the lecture:

I had so much fun the last time I deconstructed the analytically and factually foolish posters I found on the Facebook pages of my many, many Leftist friends, that I thought I’d do it again. As before, my commentary is below each poster:

I’ll Yid with Lid the floor on this one. He describes how he tried to feel true compassion for Carter when the former President announced his cancer. Unfortunately, Carter sank to his usual depths:

I pretty much decided I would keep silent. Especially when he started his press conference on Friday revealing that the horrible disease had spread to his brain. Well—that was until a reporter asked him what he would like to see happen before he died, and when he answered the former president slandered the Jewish State (see video below):

In international affairs I would say peace for Israel and its neighbors. That has been a top priority for my foreign policy projects for the last 30 years. Right now I think the prospects of are more dismal than anytime I remember in the last 50 years. Practically, whole process is practically dormant. The government of Israel has no desire for two-state solution, which is policy of all the other nations in the world. And the United States has practically no influence compared to past years in either Israel or Palestine. So I feel very discouraged about it but that would be my number one foreign policy hope.

Perhaps it’s all the Times he met with Hamas, ignoring their terrorism and declaring they want peace that has clouded Mr. Carter’s memory. But the Author of a book with a title calling the Jewish State an apartheid nation forgets history. The truth is that the last Israeli Premier who did not support a two state solution was Yitchak Rabin. Every prime minister since Peres, Netanyahu, Sharon, Barak, Comb-over...er Olmert, every single one of them declared their goal was a two state solution. Heck under Barack and Olmert, the Palestinians were offered deals which gave them 98% of what they wanted and each time they said no. On the other hand even years after Rabin shook the hands of the terrorist Arafat the Palestinians refuse to recognize the sovereign Jewish State of Israel.

So why would Jimmy Carter take the time to slander the Jewish State at the same time he was announcing the graveness of his illness. That’s easy, Carter hates Jews. (Emphasis in original.)

Read more about the utterly despicable Carter here. I don’t hope for him an agonizing death or anything like that. But honestly compels me to say that I will be delighted when he is no longer around to slander the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

The fact is that antisemitism is a pretty damn good test of a person’s moral decency — antisemites have none, and Carter is not an honorable, decent man. He is, instead, a national embarrassment who didn’t have the decency to retire following his utterly ignominious presidency, one plagued by failure, both at home and abroad. The only thing that saves him from being the worst president ever is Obama’s presidency. Carter managed to survive long enough to be succeeded by a man even more of an antisemite and failure than Carter himself. What a sad record for American politics.

I love the moral equivalency here: Bush and Cheney’s campaign deleted lots of emails, so Hillary didn’t do anything that wrong!

In fact, the RNC did delete a whole bunch of emails in 2007, and they did so in violation of the Hatch act, but the equivalency ends there. The Bush emails were purely political in nature (hyperlinks and footnotes omitted):

The Bush White House email controversy surfaced in 2007 during the controversy involving the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain hosted on an email server not controlled by the federal government. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the Hatch Act.[1] Over 5 million emails may have been lost or deleted.[2][3] Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove lost emails, leading to damaging allegations.[4] In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been deleted.[5]

The administration officials had been using a private Internet domain, called gwb43.com, owned by and hosted on an email server run by the Republican National Committee,[6] for various communications of unknown content or purpose. The domain name is an acronym standing for “George W. Bush, 43rd” President of the United States. The server came public when it was discovered that J. Scott Jennings, the White House’s deputy director of political affairs, was using a gwb43.com email address to discuss the firing of the U.S. attorney for Arkansas.[7] Communications by federal employees were also found on georgewbush.com (registered to “Bush-Cheney ’04, Inc.”[8]) and rnchq.org (registered to “Republican National Committee”[9]), but, unlike these two servers, gwb43.com has no Web server connected to it — it is used only for email.[10]

The “gwb43.com” domain name was publicized by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who sent a letter to Oversight and Government Reform Committee committee chairman Henry A. Waxman requesting an investigation.[11] Waxman sent a formal warning to the RNC, advising them to retain copies of all emails sent by White House employees. According to Waxman, “in some instances, White House officials were using nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications.”[12] The Republican National Committee claims to have erased the emails, supposedly making them unavailable for Congressional investigators.[13]

On April 12, 2007, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel stated that White House staffers were told to use RNC accounts to “err on the side of avoiding violations of the Hatch Act, but they should also retain that information so it can be reviewed for the Presidential Records Act,” and that “some employees … have communicated about official business on those political email accounts.”[14] Stanzel also said that even though RNC policy since 2004 has been to retain all emails of White House staff with RNC accounts, the staffers had the ability to delete the email themselves.

I am not defending the fact that the Bush White House tried to avoid creating records. It’s sleazy and the kind of thing one would expect from political operatives. But come on, Progressive folks! There is no indication whatsoever that what the White House did exposed America’s highest national security secrets to any Hacker who came along. Nor is there any evidence that the Bush White House spoliated documents — which is what seems to have happened with Hillary and the State Department, which deliberate destroyed Benghazi records after Congress had called for their production.

Also, by 2007, when the Bush matter emerged, he was in the lame duck phase of his presidency. There just wasn’t that much political hay to be made of it, so it vanished. This time, however, we have a perennial presidential candidate who has been in the limelight for more than twenty-years and who, in that time, is consistently caught engaged in underhanded behavior. Even if the behavior were morally equivalent (which I do not believe), the political implications are going to be different when the issues arise before a candidacy or at the end of an era.

But again, let me say the really important words that make what Hillary did so heinous: NATIONAL SECURITY and SPOLIATION. Bad Hillary! Bad girl!

I adore my dog and my dog, being part chihuahua, adores me with reciprocal ferocity. I would never confuse myself though into believing that my dog is a moral creature. Perhaps I’m disgustingly anthropocentric, but I believe morality reflects conscious decisions, not instinct. That a cat would rescue her kittens is a wonderful instinctive act completely consistent with Nature’s imperative for the continuation of a species. But that cat did not sit there thinking about the value of her life, versus her kittens’ lives. She just did what she needed.

Years ago, when my son was very little and announced that lions were bad because they hunted down zebras and gazelles, I said they weren’t. “Bad” and “good” imply an ability to make choices about good and bad. When a lion kills, it does so because it is programmed to do so. Moral analysis is not involved. My son, bless his heart, understood. I sure wish the rabid anti-Christians out there had the intelligence of a bright three-year old.

I have one question: Why is it obscene? I understand that we want our judicial system to be from the government, because only the collective will and values of the people should be brought to bear in a criminal case — especially since the government, unlike a private corporation, is theoretically constrained by the Constitution when it comes to criminal process, up to and including sentencing. But considering government’s gross inefficiencies, it would seem to me that (in theory at least) prisoners could fare just as well in a privately run jail, subject to government oversight and competing market forces, as they could in a government-run jail that answers only to itself, no matter how disgracefully managed it is.

What am I missing?

There three things I find funny here. First, Buffet imputes his selfishness to all, as well as confusing charity (which is an altruistic act) with investment (which is a theoretically selfish act that nevertheless yields benefit by pumping money and innovation into the market). Second, Buffet, all historic evidence to the contrary, thinks that government will do a better job of creating wealth than private capitalism. And third, Buffet hangs on to his money with a vengeance. I think I’ll be waiting a long time if I expect Buffet to turn his fortune over to the government for the benefit of the people.

Anyone see the logical fallacy here? Rock doesn’t define the racists. Ordinary people, the one’s who haven’t been brainwashed by our university systems, understand that racism, rather than being endemic in American culture, is almost nonexistent. Our laws are color-blind and the American people will rarely be caught in acts of overt racism — unless you go trolling through the internet’s underbelly for the few KKK wackos, who lack political power or popular support.

In the absence of real racism, the racial justice hustlers are left with “microagressions” that any sentient being understands are faked in order to browbeat and blackmail (hah! racist pun!) ordinary people. So, no, we don’t have to stop being “racist.” We have to stop the race hustlers from lying about what and who we are so that ordinary Americans of all colors can get down to the business of living their lives without government intervention and hustler shakedowns.

As I discuss at greater length below, the problem with American blacks is almost certainly not too little government, but way, way too much. (I’ve also expanded on this thought in a number of prior posts, such as this one.)

Bernie’s good at point out problems. He’s right that it’s a disgrace that so many blacks end up in jail. Of course, his solution is “Thank you, government. May I have another dose of toxic condescension” disguised as genuine welfare. There’s a huge difference between a decent society’s obligation to care for its “widows and orphans” and a racist society’s efforts to keep blacks in perpetual servitude by convincing them that they are incapable of standing and accomplishing things on their own.” Lyndon B. Johnson sure understood how welfare works, and it’s not for the black’s well-being that’s for sure:

Keeping people dependent on the government never lets them develop beyond the infant stage. Depriving them of the right to bear arms keeps them at the mercy of criminals. And constantly telling them that, without the government, they are helpless victims would, if the government were a parent and the blacks a child, be parental abuse that everyone would recognize and decry.

As always, you give the Left a little knowledge and it runs riot in ignorance. While the Founders were adamant that the Federal government not replicate the British government by having a state religion and controlling how citizens worship, the Founders — including the merely “deist/theist” Jefferson — strongly believed that the nation could thrive only on a foundation of Judeo-Christian morality:

“I am a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.” — Thomas Jefferson

“While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.” — George Washington

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams

Unsurprisingly, James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, expressed most clearly the Founders’ belief (no matter their personal relationship to God) that, while the federal government could not be a religious institution, only a Godly people could handle the freedom their new nation gave them (emphasis mine):

Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, “that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man’s right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.

Oh, and about that quotation attributed to Adams with regarding to the U.S. not being a Christian nation, the giveaway is that it was a part of the Treaty of Tripoli. Anyone halfway conversant with that treaty (i.e., no Progressives) knows that this was a treaty signed with the Muslim pirates that the Marines defeated the “shores of Tripoli.” The language was not a disavowal of Christianity but, instead, a reminder that America allowed all people to practice their religion freely, without state intervention (hyperlinks and footnotes omitted):

Article 11 reads:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

According to Frank Lambert, Professor of History at Purdue University, the assurances in Article 11 were “intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers.” Lambert writes,

“By their actions, the Founding Fathers made clear that their primary concern was religious freedom, not the advancement of a state religion. Individuals, not the government, would define religious faith and practice in the United States. Thus the Founders ensured that in no official sense would America be a Christian Republic. Ten years after the Constitutional Convention ended its work, the country assured the world that the United States was a secular state, and that its negotiations would adhere to the rule of law, not the dictates of the Christian faith. The assurances were contained in the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797 and were intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers.”[15]

The treaty was printed in the Philadelphia Gazette and two New York papers, with only scant public dissent, most notably from William Cobbett.[16]

I see this everywhere, and it’s a complete canard, one that could be advanced only by people who don’t know that Michele Bachmann has an LL.M. from William and Mary University. I was going to add, as a prop to W&M, that it was Thomas Jefferson’s alma mater, but now that he’s been intellectually discredited on account of his owning slaves when doing so was still the norm, I guess that doesn’t help Bachmann. But back to that stupid quotation:

Several readers asked us to look into whether Bachmann actually made the comments. We obliged and found no evidence backing the claim. We also reached out to Bachmann’s spokesperson, who said the former member of Congress never made the remarks.

[snip]

We also searched three comprehensive databases — Nexis and CQ, which aggregate transcripts, and Critical Mention, which records video and closed captioning — and found no record of Bachmann ever making those comments.

To our knowledge, she hasn’t appeared on Fox News since Trump announced his candidacy. She has commented on and praised Trump in several interviews on different networks, though she has never mentioned his wall proposal.

[snip]

We found no evidence that Bachmann ever said this, and her spokeswoman said she did not, in fact, say it. The meme seems to have satirical origins but is now being passed off as fact. We rate the statement Pants on Fire!

Here’s the really interesting thing about Hitler’s win: He never got more than 30% of the popular vote. What Bernie doesn’t get is that the real problem with Hitler was his fascism — which is a form of socialism that, rather than nationalizing industry, merely co-opts it. (I call this crony fascism, and it’s precisely what the Democrats under Obama have been doing for the last seven years.) The reality is that, once a leader and his party gain total control over all facets of government and the economy — which is precisely what Bernie wants to do — you have a recipe for tyranny and war.

Every time I find these posters, and then track down the facts or expose the logical fallacies, I am reminded again that, while I like my Progressive friends because they are, in day-to-day life kind and enjoyable people, when it comes to politics they are monomaniacs, and are precisely as crazy as the nice old lady down the street who lives an exemplary life and then, when she dies, is discovered to have believed that her home was Martian headquarters and that, in order to continue to placate them, her home must be left to her cars, whom the Martians worship.

Monomaniacs can be great people so long as you don’t find yourself dealing with their particular brand of insanity.

A mish-mash of things from the wonderful Caped Crusader, from Earl, and from my own Facebook feed. The first one explains a lot about the bond between Leftists and Islamists, despite the fact that the former ought to hate the latter because of little things like religion, sexual constraints, etc., while the latter definitely hate the former because of little things like lack of religion, sexual freedom, etc.

One of the things I’ve tried to drill into my children is the truism that the single biggest indicator of poverty is single motherhood. That data, incidentally, does not reflect the old-fashioned kind of single motherhood, which was the result of widowhood or abandonment. Instead, we’re talking about modern single motherhood, the kind that sees women who are deluged with birth control choices nevertheless get pregnant with boyfriends or hook-ups who feel no emotional connection or sense of economic obligation to either mother or baby.

One of my children has a part-time job at a cafe and is, for the first time, meeting adults who have full-time jobs but who aren’t middle-class professionals living in single family homes in solidly upper middle class neighborhoods. One of these adults is pregnant and is unhappy about the fact that the cafe, where she’s been working for only five months, will not give her maternity leave.

Inquiry revealed that the pregnant woman is not married; that she’s living with a boyfriend who may or may not be the father of her child (my kid doesn’t know), and that the boyfriend doesn’t work. Except for getting regular nooky at night (assuming that the pregnant woman still wants that kind of attention), the mother-to-be will be, for all practical purposes, a single mother.

My child found it concerning that the boss won’t pay this single mother not to work for him. My child was therefore stymied when I asked this question: “Why should he pay for her foolish choices?”

I noted that, while it’s entirely possible that this woman was using enough birth control to protect six woman, and nevertheless still managed to get pregnant, the greater likelihood was that she was careless. Indeed, if she really wanted to protect against single motherhood, she could have abstained from sex until she had a ring on her finger and some economic prospects.

I threw in the fact that it’s incredibly costly to do business in California, especially in the food service industry, which have extremely low profit margins. Employers generally are drowning in regulations, which makes businesses very expensive to run. Add in taxes and all the other costs of business (rent, insurance, salaries, benefits, supplies, etc.), and it’s guaranteed that the employer is clearing just enough money for his personal expenses (mortgage, insurance, food, etc.). This owner is almost certainly not living extravagantly but is, instead, living a very temperate life.

Much of the money that the federal and state government are taking away from this man, both from his business and from him personally, is going to welfare programs for single mothers, something this employer must know. Since he’s already paying for the welfare this young woman will inevitably end up using, why should he pay twice by carrying her on the books even though she’s contributing nothing to his business? Even if he was feeling charitable, the government has left him nothing with which to be charitable, not to mention the fact that the government, by snatching money from his pockets, has already decided on his behalf which charities he should support — including economically foolish single motherhood.

Such a simple question: “Why should he pay for her foolish choices, when the government is already taxing him heavily in advance to pay for all the foolish choices of intentionally single mothers across America”?

One of the mantras to emerge from feminist side of the Leftist swamps during the late 1960s/early 1970s was notion that “the personal is political.” As used by the feminists, it meant that, when suburban women got together to burn their bras, examine their genitals in mirrors, and gripe about patriarchal oppression, they weren’t just engaging in the updated version of coffee klatches. Instead, this “consciousness raising” was a political act because the conclusions they reached would drive their politics.

As is so often the case when it comes to manipulating the political process, the Leftists were onto something. No matter what they say, most people don’t approach issues through education and analysis, nor do they abandon ideas just because those ideas actually fail when they finally leave the analysis phase and become operational. Instead, most people are driven by emotion: Do I feel like a good person when I do this? Is the beneficiary of my political act a good person? And the contrary is true too: Am I punishing an “evil” person if I vote or act in a specific way (since punishing an “evil” person elevates my “goodness” quotient).

I’m not saying anything all of you haven’t already figured out. The only reason I mention this is because I’m struggling with the way in which I can counter a compelling, hard Left HBO documentary that my daughter saw, one that has left her inclined to believe that the welfare state is the answer. The documentary is “Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert.”

Maria Shriver, who produced the documentary, chose well when she and her team selected Gilbert as the poster child for single mothers, since Gilbert is a very sympathetic woman. She got married at 19 (no out-of-wedlock children here) and had three children with her husband. Unfortunately, her husband was addicted to prescription drugs (no tawdry illegal meth addiction here), wrecking the family finances and destroying their marriage. The show picks up with Gilbert now in her mid-20s, working hard for $9.49 an hour at an assisted living center for the elderly. She’s able to do this work because her children attend a government-funded pre-K daycare center in their hometown of Chattanooga. Further, this loving mother puts food on the table only thanks to the food stamps.

As Alfred Doolittle would have said, Gilbert is definitely among the deserving poor. When you see Gilbert — who did the right thing when she married her children’s father — struggling to cope with sick children and a flooded house (her boyfriend’s house), you can’t help but feel sympathetic. You want to help her. You want her to earn more money considering how hard she works and you want her to have better childcare opportunities. And you think to yourself, “Heck, if she lived in Denmark, none of this would be a problem. (In part, of course, because Denmark’s young people aren’t having children to begin with.) Gilbert would get free child care, a high living wage, all the benefits in the world, and be able to take endless sick days for her kids, as well as for herself.”

When the documentary ends, by which time you’re firmly rooting for Gilbert, the film hits you with the real numbers. Gilbert, we’re told, isn’t an anomaly. She’s part of a crowd: According to the documentary, Gilbert is the living embodiment of the 42 million women in America who live at or below the poverty line, along with (I believe) 28 million children. The documentary doesn’t have to say what we need to do. It’s quite obvious that we ought to raise the minimum wage, make free childcare available to all American children, and provide comprehensive welfare for food and housing.

In case you’re too dim to reach this conclusion by yourself, HBO helpfully provides a guide for you to read alone or discuss with a group. Some of what you’re supposed to discuss involves smart choices women can make. Other discussion ideas, though, encourage Big Government as a solution, and advance a highly partisan Progressive agenda:

The Chambliss Center [pre-K childcare] is very important for Katrina. When she picks up her children she says, “The kids are learning so much here. If I went to a normal day care center, it would cost me $300 per week for all three of my children …that’s a whole paycheck.” Child care expenses for families with working mothers can range from 20 to nearly 50% of the mother’s monthly salary. How do you think Katrina would function if her kids weren’t at the Chambliss Center? Do you know anyone who is struggling with childcare needs? What can we as a society do to help? How important is it that the Chambliss Center operates 24/7?

Numerous studies have shown the long-term benefits of high-quality early education for young learners. However, fewer than 30% of American 4-year olds attend high quality preschool programs. President Obama expressed his support for universal high-quality preschool and many states have been developing universal pre-K legislation and programs. What do you think are some of the advantages and disadvantages to government sponsored universal pre-Kindergarten programs?

[snip]

What did you know before about federal programs like Head Start, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit? Has this changed after viewing the film?

What are the social services in your area for families in need of financial assistance? Do you think it’s not enough, or too much? How are they affected by budget decisions at the State and Federal level? Do you think people are aware of what government programs provide? How do you think people feel about receiving assistance? Can you think of other programs that could be helpful to women on the brink?

The study guide ends with a list of resources, the second of which is the hard Left Center for American Progress, which some describe as the “shadow Democrat party,” and which sets the agenda for many of the Obama administration initiatives. People troubled by the hardships Gilbert faces will quickly learn that Big Government is the only thing that can save her.

After my daughter saw the show, she was pretty sure that we ought to have more free education for the pre-K crowd, more free daycare, more free food, and mandated higher wages. She was certainly correct that each of these things would have been an immediate benefit to Gilbert. My task was to get my daughter to see that these are all band-aid remedies that might staunch small individual wounds, but will not stop the fatal hemorrhaging in the American economy.

The problem I had is that there’s nothing sexy about free market fixes. They’re abstract and the benefits fall randomly, rather than on specific, targeted people, such as Gilbert. It’s this last fact that means that market reforms cannot guarantee immediate — or, indeed, any — aid to sympathetic figures such as Gilbert.

People who watch the documentary want Gilbert to be fixed immediately and her personal life becomes an overarching political argument. When I said that single motherhood is the biggest dividing line between rich and poor, my daughter pointed out that Gilbert had her children within a marriage. When I said mothers should stay married if at all possible, she pointed out that Gilbert’s husband was a drug addict who destroyed finances, so staying together was not an option. When I said that education is important, she noted that Gilbert was trying to go back to school, but could do so only with government help.

My prescriptions were a free market (as opposed to the over-regulated market we now have), which has proven repeatedly to provide increased economic opportunities for everyone, not just government cronies; education, marriage, and children, in that order; and sticking with a bad marriage, provided that it’s not violent or otherwise abusive, because that is the best way to avoid poverty for both women and children. My daughter’s prescriptions after getting a close-up look at Gilbert’s sympathetic struggles were Big Government.

I didn’t increase my sympathy quotient when I explained to her that there will always be poor people, no matter the system. (In North Korea, outside of government circles, everyone is poor.) In a strong, free-market, capitalist system, fewer people will be poor and even poor people will do better than in non-capitalist countries. For example, I said, while Gilbert is struggling by American standards, the reality is that she shares a big house with her boyfriend, complete with a modern kitchen and nice electronics; she has government-subsidized food; she owns a car; and she has a smart phone, as do all the other adults in her low-income world. It’s almost ludicrous to call her experience “poverty” when one looks at poverty in Brazil or India or Cuba or North Korea or large swathes of Africa. Yes, she’s struggling, but life is struggle.

It would be lovely to give an economic band-aid to the hardworking Gilbert. But when the Democrats demand 42 million band-aids for all the other single mothers, you’ve got a problem. If the body politic or body economic really were a body, this would be the scenario: The American body (we’ll call it Sam) gets entangled in economic brambles, and poor Sam ends up bleeding from millions of scratches on his arms and legs. He looks at the scratches and thinks, “Yikes, I need some band-aids.” Fortunately for him, a mobile blood bank rolls by and offers to buy almost all of his blood in exchange for 42 million single-use band-aids.

Sam is delighted with this offer. He’ll be able to stop the blood flow, even though he’s probably giving to the bank almost as much blood as he’s losing to the cuts. What Sam ignores is that, when the bandages are applied and the mobile blood bank rolls away, he’ll still be stuck in those brambles.

Economic reality says that, if you’re mired in brambles, you don’t sell all your blood for band-aids, while remaining deep in the thorns. Instead, you first get out of the brambles. Only then do you deal with the worst cuts, ignore the rest, and get down to the business of regaining your health and staying away the brambles that got you into trouble in the first place.

None of the above is sexy. Advocating a free market capitalist economy so that there will be fewer poor people is not sexy. Encouraging marriage, even unhappy marriages, for the sake of the children is not sexy. Acknowledging that there will always be poor people and they will always suffer is not sexy. And trying to explain that, in a healthy economy, fewer people are poor and fewer people remain poor isn’t sexy. Appearing to turn your back on the Gilbert’s of the world isn’t only un-sexy, it appears downright sadistic. And explaining that economic reality means that it’s impossible to be, simultaneously, both a comprehensive welfare state and a thriving free market is un-sexy too. (Not to mention the fact that you have to explain that Europe managed to have a welfare state with a capitalist gloss only because America paid for Europe’s defense during the long Cold War years.)

I’ve described one show and one child who was moved Left by its message. However, this close, personal focus is a chronic issue when dealing with the Left. To gain sympathy for its larger agenda, the Left always focuses on the one child who’s illegal immigrant father is deported (although never the one child whose redneck father goes to jail following drunken revelry); or the one single mother who did all the right things; or the one single Gitmo detainee who was a mere child when the Taliban forced him to kill Americans. The focus is always tight, obscuring the rest of the message.

I mentioned the other day that Ben Shapiro has written an excellent book about arguing with Leftists, How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them, which you can get free by registering at Truth Revolt. The book presupposes an argument. My question is how does one challenge this type of gooey, emotional propaganda, which gains a wide television audience and promises that the world can be healed, one government band-aid at a time?